From the lead story in the Arts and Leisure section of today's NY TImes
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The redevelopment of Times Square has finally produced a building worth talking about
: the new Westin Hotel on Eighth Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets. And people are talking about it for a welcome reason. The Westin has raised a flag over the issue of taste. Translation: many people find it ugly. Hideous. The very embodiment of beauty's evil twin.
Look up, people. This is New York. We live in one great ugly town. Not being too hung up on beauty is what makes life here possible, even thrilling. In exchange for surrendering refinement, we get a kind of urban poetry that is the envy of the world. Sometimes it takes outsiders to see it. Often, outsiders introduce new rhymes. The beauty resides, in some sense, in staying an outsider. The Westin is the consummate outsider's hotel....
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/ar...gn/20MUSC.html
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